Spring 2016: Writing, Identity, and Queer Studies
Paper #3: Final Paper Project
Length: 5-6 pages or 1200-1500 words (Please indicate word count at the end of the essay) PLUS a
Writer’s Memo of 1-2 pages
Essay Draft Due 5/4: bring 2 copies of your essay draft (not the Writer’s Memo) to class for Peer
Review
*Note: The more complete a draft you have, the better your peer group will be at helping you
think about revisions.
Final Draft with Writer’s Memo Due Monday 5/9: VIA EMAIL to kersh@dickinson.edu
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Assignment Details:
For this essay, you need to make a claim about your life. Over the course of the semester, we have
read a number of texts which take up the issue of “identity” and “normal” from a variety of different
angles. Put a moment (or moments) from your own life in conversation with something we have read
together in class. The idea is that you will take the critical tools we developed in this course and apply
them.
I want you to specifically use texts from our class to help you analyze, or close read, your own
experiences. What story do you have that needs to be told? How have you changed from that event,
experience, or relationship? What changed you? How? Why? So what? Think of your life as a text,
and close read it. I want you to push past an obvious, or cliché, reading and explore deeper, implicit
meanings. BE SPECIFIC. Try to remember details, thoughts, dialogue, or other information that will
help you as you perform your close reading. Remember, your life is the text here, so use it to support
your reading. Use what we have done in class to help you analyze this moment/these moments.
How is this paper like the others I have written?
Just like in both of the previous papers for this course, I am looking for your ability to close read and
then make an interpretation based on the data you gather from your close reading (a.k.a your use of
“The Method” from Writing Analytically). Also, like other assignments for this course, I am asking
you to use one of our theoretical or fictional texts as a lens through which you will look at your own
story. You may incorporate aspects from your blog posts, but I expect this paper to go further, delve
deeper, and come up with a more sophisticated close reading of the text(s) than you have done so far.
Really look closely and develop your own reading of it a moment from your life using our course
readings to help you formulate your argument. Think of your moment(s) as a text to be analyzed:
What does it say? What does it mean? So what? How do we make sense of it?
Spring 2016: Writing, Identity, and Queer Studies
Please make sure to quote from other readings we have had for class. Make sure to note pages
numbers for any quotations and, as always, cite any source you use for this paper. You do not need
to rely on outside sources, but if you do make sure to properly cite all sources (even if it is Wikipedia).
Helpful Hints:
Read parts of Writing Analytically to help you develop an argument that utilizes two or more texts:
 pp99-100 provides useful method for finding details to write about in the section called
“Difference within Similarity”
 “Apply a Reading as a Lens” on pp 118-119 walks you through using one text to analyze
another.
 pp 154-155, contains “Strategies for Making Personal Responses More Analytical”
 finally, pp156-158 talks about how to compare two texts in the section “Comparison/Contrast”
Also, these passages might be useful:
 pp. 165-168 walks you through how to use evidence (in our case, evidence is language from the
text) and connect it to claims.
 pp. 228-231 gives good advice about what makes strong claim and how to write one.
 What goes in my Intro? What goes in my conclusion? See “Locating the Evolving Thesis in the
Final Draft” on pp 249-250
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Writer’s Memo Instructions:
Write a 1-2page (250-500 words) letter to me about your growth as a writer and thinker over the
course of the semester. Questions to consider are:

What do you think is working well in your final project? About what are you most proud?

Outline, in some detail, what your overall writing process was and how it evolved over the
course of the semester. (For example: class discussion, in-class writing, revision, writing
center visit, peer review, etc.). What was the most important thing you accomplished in these
steps? Were there any particular obstacles you encountered along the way? BE SPECIFIC.

Finally, what has writing this paper—or participating in this class more generally— taught you?
In other words, what are you taking away from this semester?

This is a letter, not a paper. You may write it informally, so long as that doesn't lead you to
take it less seriously.